Comments on: Diabetes Cure via Islet Cell Transplant

By: Diabetologica

Diabetologica — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 20:25:53 +0000

First Islet Transplant from a Living Donor - Pioneering operation gives hope to diabetes sufferers
Breaking News from the Guardian:A Japanese woman is free of the symptoms of diabetes after receiving cells from her mother's pancreas in the first transplant from a living donor, it emerged yesterday. The woman, 27, who had had insulin-dependent diabe...

By: Jase

Jase — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 15:48:59 +0000

This should not be marketted as a cure, it is not a cure in any way, shape or form.

It is only beneficial to an extremely small percentage of type 1 diabetics, due to the fact that the immunosuppressive drugs one must go on after having the foreign dna islet cells transplanted, far outweigh any benefits of normalised insulin production, unless of course the patient has much bigger problems, eg. diabetic complications, or other, less treatable diseases that are taking much bigger tolls on them, this is why it is not useful to most type 1 diabetics.

For those that need it, it is great, but it is not a cure.

The label of 'cure' on procedures such as this, only help to put a proper cure further out of reach for type diabetics.

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 13:01:51 +0000

As the article said, these have been going on in Canada and the US for a few years, with pretty good success. I believe some of the researchers are getting closer to single-donor transplants, which would obviously be a huge advantage.

My wife and I talked about her volunteering for a study a few years ago, but we weren't done having kids yet. Now that we are, we should look into it again.